I'm director of the Reynolds Center for Business Journalism at the Cronkite School at Arizona State. I'm also author of the Forbes eBook Curbing Cars: America's Independence From The Auto Industry. I was Detroit bureau chief for the New York Times, and led Changing Gears, a public media project that studied the industrial Midwest. E: vmaynard@umich.edu T @mickimaynard @curbingcars

GM Is No. 1 In The World Again In Auto Sales

It’s been three years since General Motors could claim to be the world’s best selling automaker. But now it is back in the driver’s seat.

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GM said Thursday that it sold 9.025 million vehicles in 2011. That would put it first among global carmakers, ahead of Volkswagen, with sales of 8.015 million, according to The New York Times.

Toyota, which has been No. 1 since 2008, hasn’t officially announced its 2011 numbers. But it estimates that it sold 7.9 million vehicles last year, when its performance was battered by the Japanese earthquake and tsunami, floods in Thailand, and the lingering impact of millions of recalls.

What does GM get from the number one spot? Bragging rights, certainly, although so far it isn’t trumpeting the victory. The sales numbers were camouflaged in a press release about Chevrolet.

Victories like this are balm for dealers, suppliers and everyone else associated with an auto company, not to mention the Obama Administration. It rolled the dice on the $82 billion bailout for the auto industry, including the managed bankruptcies at GM and Chrysler, and still owns a chunk of GM stock.

And, GM returns to its place in history. It ranked as the world’s biggest automaker for more than 70 years, since it passed Ford during the Great Depression.

Still, the fight will heat up again in 2012. Toyota is aiming to sell 8.48 million vehicles this year, and hopes to climb above 9 million in 2013. Volkswagen is aiming even higher: it hopes to sell 10 million vehicles by the end of the decade.

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It is a perfect story of resurrection! We want all EU, US and Japanese car makers and their JV partners in democratic countries to rise and prosper. The primary focus MUST be on customers and employee satisfaction with judicious executive payouts. The rest will automatically fall in place.

But look for WalMart employees to register with BullUnion at BullUnion.com beginning March 1st, 2012 so they can be merged into a major union most likely within 9-12 months.

Although a hefty climb up a mountain as recent attempts to join union has proven futile. The efforts were great and the votes were close.

The BullUnion staging company has developed a new method for allowing employees of major corporations to register discreetly and merge quickly wihtout the typical confrontation associated with individual store organizing.

Look forward to a stronger future WalMart employees…as your time to organize has come and will be available to you and your fellow multi-million employees by March 1st, 2012!

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The Bull Union will begin accepting WalMart employees registration into the transfer to union merge process beginning March 1st, 2012. Simply go to www.BullUnion.com and register as quickly as possible to become a member of this great new staging area for entry into a major union.

This method has been developed to help protect the identity of employees of corporations that wish to join a union…but have been afraid to get involved for fear of losing their jobs or a long term intimidation process that has been typically an expected treatment from management for the past 30 or more years.

Don’t forget to keep a copy of your EXR number that you receive automatically, once you’ve completed and submitted your registration form at the website we have provided you with.

Our database is backed up multiple times per day and we have implemented a back up process that retrieves your registration info and saves it in an offline system…after the membership info has been downloaded and saved offline, the online database is deleted permanently. Hackers cannot access data that isn’t stored offline, thereby protecting the membership database in a manner that other companies should implement due to the severity associated with having customer data hacked and stolen. :-)

We welcome all WalMart employees to join as members to become the very first successful organized corporation using the Bull Union organizing methodology, so that many of the other corporations across the United States can also join in a swift manner too.

And General Motors should be number one in Value. As a major stockholder the United States government should have General Motors seek a buyer for the company while the company is at the top of the game.

The Company should at least be valued and sold for well over $300 billion dollars and the United States Government of a Capitalist Country should realize a nice tidy profit from the sale of it’s shares. It would be an afront and undermind capitalist values to sale the world’s #1 auto maker at a loss.